27. Bat
twenty-seven
Bat
No time to think.
Only time to move.
I disappeared from the library, pulling myself through the fabric of the house. The manor blurred around me—walls, floors, centuries all compressed into a single breath. I reformed in the piano room.
Correct guess.
Molly huddled there with Edmund, the twins clutched against her skirts, and Thomas hovering near the window. All of them flickered and faded, terror bleeding their forms translucent.
“Molly!” I closed the distance between us, and she jerked, one hand flying to her chest. “I need your help. Charlie. I need to keep him safe. Now.”
Her one visible eye widened behind the bloodstained cloth. Then she straightened, but not with a servant’s posture.
With a mother’s.
“Of course, love.” Fierce. Immediate. No questions asked.
I vanished again, pulling myself back to the library. Lady Grimthorne pressed her palms against the window, her form flickering like a candle in the wind.
“Charlie!” I shouted.
He spun, blue eyes finding me immediately. Startled. Confused. But already moving.
“Come with me.”
He followed. Of course he followed. Down the corridor, quick, quick, quick. The electric saw’s roar grew louder, competing with the sound of Charlie’s breathing and my own frantic thoughts.
I stopped at the cupboard. The same one where Molly first terrified Charlie.
“Quickly.” I yanked the door open. “In here.”
Charlie’s brow furrowed, but he stepped inside without argument. His trust in me punched through my chest worse than any wound.
I followed him in, pulling the door shut behind us.
Darkness swallowed the space. Charlie’s warmth pressed close in the confined area, his shoulder brushing mine, the scent of him surrounding me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. My hand found his face, fingers tracing the curve of his cheekbone. His lovely, lovely face. “I’m so sorry.”
“What?” His voice pitched higher. “Sorry for what?”
The key turned in the lock.
Thank you, Molly.
“I can’t risk you getting hurt.”
Silence. Then—
“Bat. Bat, what the fuck did you just do?”
I could hear it. The exact moment understanding crashed into him.
“Open this door.” His voice dropped low. Dangerous. “Open it right fucking now.”
“No.”
“You absolute prick!” The pitch-black darkness hid the fury surely twisting his features. I knew it anyway. Could picture it perfectly—those blue eyes blazing ice, jaw clenched, hands probably curling into fists. “Let me out!”
I slipped through the door.
Molly stood waiting, hands wringing her apron.
Inside the cupboard, Charlie exploded. Fists hammered against wood. He screamed my name, calling me a fucking idiot, demanding I let him out, threatening violence I probably deserved.
I’d rather have locked him in Brad’s car. Sent him to the garden, the town, a different bloody country. But there’d been no time to argue, and zero chance he’d have gone. Not willingly. This was the only way to keep him safe.
“Stay with him unless you really can’t,” I told Molly. “Will the door hold?”
We both looked at it. The wood shuddered under Charlie’s assault.
“BARTHOLOMEW!” His voice broke. “Don’t you dare—don’t you dare fucking do this!”
Pain lanced through me. Oh well. An angry Charlie was better than a dead Charlie. Even if he never forgave me.
“I’ll do my very best,” Molly said quietly.
I nodded. Couldn’t speak. Charlie’s shouts followed me as I pulled myself down through the house, through the foundations, through the terrible weight of the manor’s history.
The basement stairs.
I reformed at the top.
Father Ashworth stood rigid, clutching a Bible and a silver cross. Brad leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, expression caught between smugness and apprehension. Evelyn hovered near the priest, hands clasped together.
And below—
Harrison crouched at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a yellow protective helmet and goggles. The electric saw screamed in his hands, sparks flying as the blade bit into ancient metal.
Each step down felt like walking deeper underwater, pressure building in my ears. The walls closed in, rough stone scraping against nothing. My form flickered and reformed, barely holding together.
The tiny space at the bottom looked even smaller now. Harrison filled most of it, broad shoulders hunched as he worked. The ruined fuse box clung to the left wall—glass panel shattered, exposed wires dangling like intestines.
And the door.
Black iron bands ran across its surface, bolted deep into stone. Medieval. Impenetrable.
Except Harrison’s saw cut through it like butter.
And I felt it.
The thing behind the door.
Cornelius.
His excitement washed over me like rancid water, thick and cloying. Each spark from the saw sent a ripple of anticipation through the air. His hunger pressed outward, testing the weakening bindings, probing for gaps.
Soon, something whispered. Not words exactly. More like a feeling pressed directly into my consciousness. Soon soon soon—
The saw screamed louder.
Harrison leaned in, applying more pressure.
No choice.
I pulled myself together—every scattered atom, every fragment of consciousness—and dove into Harrison’s body.
Possession drained energy faster than anything. Faster than materialising solid, faster than moving objects, faster than every other paranormal party trick combined.
But I saw no other way.
I slammed into Harrison’s consciousness, pushing past his defences quicker than I’d ever attempted. No finesse, no gradual merging. Just brute force.
His awareness recoiled, fighting back.
The body jerked.
Harrison’s—my—hands spasmed. The saw bucked sideways, blade shrieking as it caught metal at the wrong angle.
Control slipped.
The saw twisted, momentum carrying it down.
Down.
Into Harrison’s foot.
Pain exploded through me, white-hot and violently visceral. The blade chewed through polished leather, through flesh, through bone. Blood sprayed. The smell hit immediately—copper and meat and something burning.
I couldn’t hold on.
The agony shredded my concentration, ripping me apart from the inside. Harrison’s body became a cage of nerve endings, all of them screaming.
I flew out.
Ejected myself from Harrison’s consciousness and reformed a metre away, flickering, translucent.
Harrison collapsed. His helmet clattered against stone as he writhed on the ground, both hands clutching his ruined foot. Blood pooled around him, seeping between the flagstones. His screams filled the tiny space, ricocheting off walls.
“Harrison!” Evelyn screamed.
Chaos erupted. Brad shoved past Father Ashworth, thundering down the stairs. Evelyn followed, stumbling, her heel catching on a step. The priest pressed himself against the wall, cross clutched to his chest.
All of them converged in that tiny space at the bottom. Shoulders colliding, arms tangling, everyone trying to help and just making everything worse.
Above their panic, I heard it.
A groan.
Not Harrison. Not any of them.
The door.
A flickering pulse of the symbols engraved on it, all those years ago.
A tremendous boom.
The door—metal bands and ancient wood and Ms Bénassy’s binding magic—tore free from its moorings. It fell inward, slamming against the flagstones with a crash that rattled my teeth.
Dust exploded outward. Stone fragments scattered.
And behind where the door had been—
Darkness. Absolute and hungry.
Well, I thought, watching the shadows begin to move. That went well.
The darkness didn’t just fill the doorway.
It breathed.
Harrison’s screams cut off mid-shriek. His body jerked upward—legs dangling, arms flailing—lifted by something invisible.
Something that gripped him like a child’s doll.
He shook. His head snapped back and forth, neck bending at angles that made my non?existent stomach turn.
Blood from his mangled foot sprayed in arcs, spattering Brad’s face, Evelyn’s dress, the ancient stone walls.
Then Harrison flew backwards into the darkness.
Gone.
Evelyn shrieked, the sound tearing right through me. “Do something! Do something!”
Brad stared at the doorway. His face had gone chalk-white, all that rugby-jock bravado stripped away. His eyes darted between the darkness and the stairs behind him. Calculating. Weighing odds.
Father Ashworth’s hand shot out—bony fingers digging into Brad’s shoulder—and shoved.
Brad yelped as he stumbled through the doorway, arms pinwheeling. The darkness swallowed him whole.
“Come on, boy!” Father Ashworth snapped. “Get that torch out!”
A beam of light flickered somewhere in the black. Brad’s voice echoed back, high and terrified. “I can’t—there’s nothing here, I can’t see—”
Evelyn followed them through. She gathered her dress in both hands and stepped into the darkness without hesitation, heels clicking against unseen stone.
Then silence.
Floating down, I flickered—still weak from possessing Harrison, from the saw, from the pain that had ripped me apart. I hovered near the fuse box. Exposed wires dangled like dead vines.
One of them sparked. Fuck. Had Harrison’s saw caught a wire?
Another spark.
Just a small thing. A brief flash of light and the smell of burning insulation.
But I knew that spark.
Remembered it.
The memory pulled me under.
The kitchen. Michael’s laugh—that wonderful sound I’d spent six months coaxing out of him. Six months of patient lessons, of gentle encouragement, of watching depression’s grip slowly loosen as his fingers found the strings.
We’d been eating crisps. Talking about bands. About the future. About everything.
Then darkness. Sudden and absolute. The lights died with a soft pop.
“Shit,” I said. “Power cut?”
Michael didn’t answer.
The wrongness settled over me immediately. That crawling sensation that something had shifted, like the house itself was holding its breath.
“Stay here,” I told Michael. “I’ll check the fuse box.”
Down the basement stairs. Each step bringing that wrongness closer, pressing against my skin. The torch in my hand barely cut through the dark.
Bottom of the stairs. That tiny space. The fuse box on the wall, its glass panel intact.
Behind me—
A sound. Footsteps.
I turned.
Michael stood at the top of the stairs.
Stood.
Not sitting in his wheelchair. Not leaning on crutches. Just standing there, weight balanced on both legs like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Mike?” I pressed back against the door. “How are you—”
He walked down the stairs. Not walked. Moved. Jerky. Mechanical. Like someone operating a puppet, still learning which strings did what.
His face looked wrong. Slack. Empty. His eyes stared past me rather than at me.
“Michael, what’s—”
He reached the fuse box. His fist drove into the glass panel with impossible force. No hesitation. No pain response.
Glass shattered. Blood poured down his hand, his wrist, his forearm. Dark in the torchlight.
“Stop!” I grabbed his shoulder. “Mike, you need to—”
His hand closed around a shard. Long. Vicious. Blood made it slippery.
He turned.
Those empty eyes found mine.
Then he drove the glass into my side.
It slid easily between two ribs. I’d felt the deliberate precision of it. The wrongness of Michael’s strength, Michael’s face, Michael’s body doing this terrible thing.
Michael screamed.
The sound ripped out of him—agonised and horrified. His eyes flooded with awareness, with comprehension, with absolute terror at what his hands were doing.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t stop, I can’t—”
The glass twisted.
Everything went dark.
A different kind of dark. Final. Complete.
Until I opened my eyes again as something else.
I floated there, at the bottom of the stairs, translucent and shaking. Processing.
Michael had done it. Michael had killed me. Been forced to kill me.
What had happened next? I didn’t know for sure, but I could easily imagine.
Michael’s parents came home. Found their paralysed son at the bottom of the basement stairs, covered in blood, cradling his dead guitar teacher. Their boy who couldn’t walk had somehow made it down those stairs. Had somehow killed someone.
No wonder there were no police records. No missing person reports. No investigation.
Just a family trying to protect their traumatised child, cleaning up the evidence of something they couldn’t possibly explain. That Michael couldn’t explain. What happened to him in the twenty-seven years that followed? Had he managed to forgive himself?
And me. Trapped here. No body to be found, no funeral, no closure. Just another ghost in Grimthorne Manor’s collection.
I looked at the doorway. At the darkness that had inhaled Harrison, Brad, Evelyn, Father Ashworth.
Cornelius waited inside there.
What could he do to me? Kill me again?
The thought should have been funny. Should have brought some bitter amusement.
Instead, terror crawled through my incorporeal form. Because death wasn’t the worst thing. Existence after death proved that.
But non-existence? Being erased?
Who knew what that malevolent presence was capable of?
And Charlie.
Charlie wasn’t actually safe in that cupboard. Not really. Not with this door open, not with Cornelius loose, not with the manor’s protections shattered.
There was no other choice.
I went into the darkness.